


Cupcake Capital of Alabama

by seekingferret



Category: Hart of Dixie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 17:23:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17047397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/pseuds/seekingferret
Summary: "Buy your own pocketbook knife," Lemon snaps.





	Cupcake Capital of Alabama

**Author's Note:**

  * For [useyourtelescope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/useyourtelescope/gifts).



_"And yes, every town claims its diner’s waffles are the best in the world, but somewhere in some town there really are the best waffles in the world. So delicious, and rich, and golden brown that anyone who tasted them would decide never leave that town. Somewhere those waffles exist. Why can’t it be here?”_

~Leslie Knope

AnnaBeth is astonished to realize she has a four week before her final semester of nursing school. The breakneck pace of school and work and long distance relationship had completely caught her up, and then her exams passed and she was caught unready for a big emptiness on her calendar. She could go visit George in Nashville, or hang out in Bluebell with the gang, giving Zoe and Wade some time away from the baby and catching up with Lemon. But she finds she is motivated to spend the time answering the big questions. Why are we here on Earth? Is there truly one soul mate out there waiting for us to find them? And are the Butter Stick's cupcakes truly the best Alabama has to offer?

Cupcake Quest 2015 instantly earns a 50 dollar sponsorship and guaranteed top of the fold placement from Dash DeWitt's Blog. She uses the money to buy a big red banner with the project's official motto on it: Too Many Calories or Bust. Wade helps her attach it to the top of her car on a massive, windbreaking mast. 

There are a lot of bakeries in Alabama, and AnnaBeth only has three weeks. That means she's going to have to compromise and not see every bakery in existence. She researches bakeries on the internet and builds her own list of seventy five must-eats, then asks around and her friends give her another seventy five to try. One hundred and fifty cupcakes in three weeks. She probably can't do that, but it'll be fun to try. Thirty of the bakeries are in Mobile. She decides not to be offended on Huntsville's behalf that all of the bakeries Bluebell suggests to her are located in the southern part of the state. Auburn's six nominations beat out Tuscaloosa's five, to her relief.

AnnaBeth enlists Zoe to help plan the itinerary, and she stays up all night helping. Well, okay, she stays up all night keeping tabs on TBD Hart-Kinsella's crying (He has a real name now, but nobody in Bluebell uses it). During the rare respites, she helps with the itinerary. 

"Remember, if you want to be truly scientific, there needs to be a control group," Zoe says. "That means every few days, you need to eat a fresh Butter Stick cupcake so you remember what they taste like. You don't want to be a week and sixty cupcakes in and completely lose your cupcake compass! That would be a disaster." Truly, Zoe could use a little more sleep, but she's a good friend. Their trip schedule is an organizational masterwork. If she can actually stick to this schedule, she'll be able to eat at 130 of the 150 bakeries before she has to turn back for her final semester. The remaining 20 are just too remote to contemplate visiting in her allotted time. Better luck next time, Bake O Rama of Taylor's Corner. 

All of Bluebell sees AnnaBeth and Lemon off with a parade. Lemon can't stay for long, because there's a contractor due next week to remodel her bedroom and she needs to be there to make sure he doesn't cheat her with subgrade lumber. But she agreed to join for the Mobile part of the trip. They haven't had a girls weekend in far too long, Lemon says. AnnaBeth privately hopes this one will be at least a little soberer than the last one, but she knows better than to say it aloud. 

\---

Day one starts off deceptively easily. She parks in downtown Mobile at 6 in the morning and they split up. They meet back at the car at noon laden down with twenty pairs of cupcakes between them. 

It is a lot of cupcakes.

More than AnnaBeth had imagined.

So many cupcakes.

"I don't understand why it looks like so many!" she complains to Lemon, setting them down on their hotel room's crowded coffee table. Each is carefully labeled with a color-coded index card identifying the bakery and date and time purchased. There is space for their notes underneath. "I've baked forty cupcakes before, many times, for Memory Matron fundraisers. I know what forty cupcakes looks like. Why does this look like so many cupcakes, Lemon? Tell me! Why does it look like so many?"

"Now calm down, AnnaBeth. I suppose it's because you've never had to eat all of the cupcakes at a bake sale. But don't worry, you won't have to eat them alone. I'm eating half."

"Maybe I should rethink this plan. I'm supposed to eat 150 cupcakes in three weeks. This just seems crazy."

"I think you just need a new eating strategy. You don't need to eat the whole cupcake, right? Just take a bite of each one. That's enough to judge on. You can manage 150 bites."

"But the top of a cupcake is not the same as the bottom. There's the frosted and unfrosted parts, and because of the shape they cook differently, so no, I don't think I can just take one bite. That would be letting Dash down."

"Well, then, take two bites. Cut the cupcake in half horizontally and take one bite of the top and one bite of the bottom. It's actually better that way, you'll be able to separately grade the two sections of the cupcake. Here, I'll help you cut." Lemon reaches into her pocketbook and pulls out a large serrated knife. AnnaBeth takes a step back in surprise, then laughs. Of course Lemon is prepared for everything. 

"I may have to borrow that knife for the rest of this trip," she says.

"Buy your own pocketbook knife," Lemon snaps. She finishes the cuts with predictably terrifying efficiency, like the three-time Bluebell's Fastest Knifework Competion champion that she is.

"Well, let's eat!"

Crackthorpe & Son's Honey Frosted Chocolate Cupcake earns the highest rating of the first batch. The top is sweet and earthy, the bottom is moist and rich. About the Lily Blossom's Vanilla Hibiscus cupcake, with promised but undetectable notes of lavender and mint, the less said the better. Afterward, they collapse on top of each other on the bed in a sugar coma. AnnaBeth rethinks her desire for a soberer girls' weekend, if this is what sobriety feels like. 

"I'm going to need to pace myself better than this, Lemon," she groans.

"Good news, you ate twenty cupcakes today, and you only need to average six cupcakes a day to complete the trip, according to Zoe, so this, um, bacchanalian orgy of sucrose need not be repeated."

"You got 'bacchanalian orgy of sucrose' from Zoe, too, didn't you?" Lemon doesn't answer, just hoists herself off of the bed and rushes to the bathroom.

Day two is easier. They only have ten cupcakes (Twenty Bites!) to eat to finish off the Mobile list, and they have time and stomach space afterward to grab dinner and a couple of cocktails at this cute restaurant on the bay before she has to hand off Lemon back to Lavon. 

After Lemon leaves, the trip becomes lonelier. The next few days are bigger towns, without Bluebell's charm. She buys cupcakes from cashiers eager to move on to the next customer, and eats them by herself in run-down motel rooms with tattered and mismatched curtains. Has this been George Tucker's life, she wonders, barnstorming with the Truitt Brothers through the South? At least, she knows, he wouldn't be bothered by the curtains. 

In the afternoon, she writes her reviews for the blog, trades emails with Zoe and Lemon and Cricket, and gets ready for another drive to another run-down motel so she'll be set for the morning rush. 

\---

Then she finds Richardson. Halfway between Mobile and Montgomery, tucked into a funny bend on the Alabama River, Richardson is a collection of farmland and woodlands, with a town center so small Bluebell's dwarfs it. Calling it a town is a stretch of the imagination. But what is striking about Richardson is that the town center is not the only thing that is Bluebell in miniature. 

Everything is. Their mayor was a former football star at Division III Birmingham Southern College who keeps a dwarf caiman in a terrarium in his mansion. The town gossip's newsletter is distributed via the South's only still-active dial-up BBS. The town paralegal (the nearest lawyer lives twenty miles toward Montgomery) has been engaged to the leader of the Richardson Belles for the last six years, but town rumor says he's got eyes for the new physician's assistant. 

AnnaBeth is subconsciously meddling in local affairs before she even realizes what she's doing. No, she tells herself as forcefully as she can manage. They can by without you, she reminds herself. They must have their own jayvee AnnaBeth, after all. She buys a cupcake from the Half Stick Bakery (not bad, but not as good as the Butter Stick's, naturally), and gets back on the road.

\---

She's up to ninety seven cupcakes tasted (a hundred and ninety four bites, natch) before she finds one that really competes for the title. In a panic she phones Zoe. She's not at home and she's not at the office, and she's forgotten to charge her cell phone again, but Brick asks Tom to track her down and eventually it turns out that she and Wanda have been pushing strollers together by the pier. 

"Control!" AnnaBeth screams into the telephone as soon as a breathless Tom slaps a cell phone into Zoe's ear. "I need a Control ASAP!"

"Calm down, AnnaBeth," Zoe says. "What in the name of this good earth are you talking about? And can it wait? Wanda and I were in the middle of a fascinating conversation about Froda's diaper rash. I can call you back in a half..."

AnnaBeth steels herself. "Zoe Hart, if you put down that phone, we are no longer friends. I am having a crisis of faith here and I am depending on you. I need you to do the following things, in the exact order I say them. First, I need you to apologize to Wanda. I know how important it is for young mothers to be able to bond with each other, given how lonely it is and how impossible it is for anyone else to understand what you're going through. I am so sorry that I am interrupting your bonding time. As soon as you finish comforting Wanda's crying, you will walk your stroller back into town and you will go to the Butter Stick. And no dilly-dallying on the comforting! You can give her no more than ninety seconds of comfort, do you understand? If you go more than ninety seconds, they might be out of chocolate cupcakes. I need you to leave your stroller outside, you know how much Angus hates it when TBD cries around the pastries. He says it makes the pastries sad. Then walk into the bakery, buy one Chocolate cupcake, one Strawberry cupcake, and one Salted Caramel Chocolate Fritter cupcake. I'll pay you back as soon as I'm back in town, you know I'm good for it. And then I need you and TBD to run over to the Rammer Jammer and give the box with the cupcakes to Wade, and tell him he needs to drive them to the Hop Stop Motel in Pendergrass Grove. It's about a seven hour drive. I need the damned Control cupcakes, Zoe, and I need them now! Do you understand what you're going to do?"

"I understand. But Wade's not gonna be happy about having to drive all that..."

"He owes me this," AnnaBeth says, through gritted teeth, and Zoe is wise enough not to argue. The Control Cupcake arrives before ten in the evening and AnnaBeth is relieved to confirm that Auntie Jo's butterscotch pecan cupcake is only the second best cupcake she's ever eaten. 

\---

When Zoe and AnnaBeth had planned out the full itinerary, she'd intended to make a big ceremony of the eating of the last cupcake, but by the time she gets to number 129 (Sadly, Billy Joe's Bakehouse, the 130th bakery on her list, closed six weeks ago, she learned upon arriving in Brighton Hill.), she is no mood for fuss. She is in no mood for cupcakes at all. She downs the bottom bite with a badly mixed vodka cranberry. The cupcake tastes like cardboard, she writes.

The drive home is eight hours long. She does it in three legs, stopping for greasy diner burgers and the relief of not having to eat any more cupcakes. Her mind is empty, all of the tension and stress of the road washing away with the miles. Suddenly, everything seems clear. Soon enough she is back in Bluebell, still the cupcake capital of Alabama, as Dash Dewitt's blog proclaims buoyantly.


End file.
